Let me tell you a story.

When I was a child, I was obsessed with keys and magic doors. I had a set of plastic coloured keys and I would search around the outside of our house and our backyard, looking for the secret magic doors I was convinced existed. I was so CERTAIN. I knew that all I had to do was find the right one, put the plastic key in the lock and ta-da! I’d be in a different world. Give me talking animals, give me a world made of chocolate, give me wizards and witches, I didn’t care – I just ached to go through the damn door.

The point of this story is two-fold. Today, we’re talking about how to use stories from your own life to make your writing personal and hold people’s attention. If you’re still reading, it means my above story worked.

The second reason, is to show you how much of a crazy effect stories can have on people. What was it that made me so sure there were magic doors I could travel through? Stories. Specifically, movies like Return to Oz, books like the Chronicles of Narnia and TV shows like T-Bag. I was so captivated by the stories I watched and read, that they spilled over into my real life.

Would you like to have that kind of influence on people? For your stories to have a real emotional impact so much that they can’t stop thinking about them? Maybe you won’t have your readers running around like lunatics trying to find magic doors, but if you dig deep you can impact them in a real and positive way.

How to Influence via Story

The degree to which you can use story to influence will depend on the format. In this article, I had one paragraph to give you a brief anecdote. This kind of format is a hook, designed to get your attention, to quiet the noise around you so you can concentrate on what comes next. This isn’t a magic door type of story (even though its about magic doors… META), but it is deeply personal and thus should be briefly engaging on an emotional level.

For many of you, this will be the kind of story you’ll be writing: the small anecdote that fits in with your marketing materials such as blog posts, articles and advertising. I know many others of you are planning longer work – specifically books. I’ll be writing more about long formats in later posts. (There’s a LOT of exciting things we can do, even if you THINK you’re just writing a straight business book. Little do you know! Mwah haha!)

For today, let’s concentrate on how to open a short article with a story.

What’s YOUR Story?

When you’re planning a piece, start with the subject. What do you want to write about? What do you want to communicate? What do you want to help people with? When you’ve decided that, it’s time to choose a story. As I mentioned above, the story is the hook, so we always start the piece with it.

Finding it hard to choose? Of course you are! Here’s the problem: even though you have a whole life full of stories to choose from (or perhaps because of that), it’s easy to get overwhelmed. It’s understandable – there are a lot of memories for you to flick through! The trick, as with much of writing, is just to sit and think.

Sitting and thinking! That sounds even worse to some of you, doesn’t it?! You want to take action, not think about it! But the ol’ sit and think is one of the most valuable skills you can learn if you want to write well. When I was preparing this article, after I decided I wanted to talk about story, I just sat for about 5 minutes staring at they keyboard, thinking about my life and my personal connection to story. What do I love about it? What reels me in? And what is an anecdote I can share that illustrates that?

There were many I could have chosen from, but I went with the one above because it’s a little different and it’s deeply personal. Yes, I’m willing to admit that I had a disturbing obsession with magic doors – because it was the best way I could think of to help you understand. Often, the right story will feel scary to put out there, simply because it’s a reflection of you. Most of us have been taught to guard our inner lives, as if having a past and dreams and hopes and fears somehow makes us less human. It doesn’t. It’s WHAT MAKES US HUMAN.

If you want to impact people, you need to be willing to tap into that inner life and retrieve the good stuff.

Don’t Be Afraid

Trick subtitle! It’s all well and good to tell you not to be afraid, but life doesn’t work like that. You’ll probably be scared. What you need to learn is to do it anyway, despite the fear you might feel. Once you’ve hit publish a few times and you realise it’s no big deal, the fear will dissipate and you’ll wonder why you ever thought the sky was going to fall.

If you think of some of our most beloved modern personalities, you’ll see that people will love you if you’re willing to share yourself. Look at Oprah – what do you think made her such an epic star? It wasn’t her guests, or her story ideas. It was HER. It was her willingness to talk about her struggles, most notably with her weight. Being able to stand on international television and talk frankly about your weight is incredibly brave for a woman – but that’s what she did. She made legions of adoring fans because of her openness, how relatable she was.

If Oprah was able to do that, literally in front of millions, you can surely give a small part of yourself at the start of an article!

Today’s Exercise

Sit down with paper and a pen. Write out something personal you remember from your childhood. Be real, be honest. We’re NOT going to publish this story (unless you decide you want to later!). All I want you to do is to access the story and practice writing it out. Use emotive words, give as many details as you can. Try to make the reader feel like they were right there with you.

When you’re done, you can do what you want with the paper – rip it up and light it on fire, if you want! Or file it away for later. The most important thing is, now you’ve practiced you’ll see how easily you can do it. And when you can access those stories, you’ll have just added a very powerful tool to your writing kit.

*Storyoking is a word I made up. Because I like making up words. Yoking is about tying animals together for ploughing. And accessing a lifetime of memories is like ploughing your mind for stories. See? I’m so clever! Sort of…